Rich Peverley knew at the start of the offseason that he wasn’t going to be back in Boston.

He had two years remaining on a three-year, $9.75 million deal he had signed the previous season, but Peter Chiarelli informed him at the exit meetings that the B’s were going to have to trade him to free up cap space.

Now Peverley finds himself in Dallas, having been shipped with Tyler Seguin to the Stars in the July 4 blockbuster.

“No hard feelings,” Peverley said. “It’s a business. You wish them the best, but now I’m focused on being in Dallas.”

Peverley admits that the time between breakup day and the trade was strange. He knew he wasn’t going to be with the Bruins, but he wasn’t a free agent and he didn’t know where he was going. It was strange.

“It definitely was,” he said. “I knew it was coming, but it is what it is. I just kind of got away a little bit. It was a long season, having the lockout and going to Europe and coming back and [playing] all the way to July, it was a long season. I was just trying to clear my mind, but having that in the back of your mind, not knowing where you were going to go was a little bit stressful.”

The veteran forward says he doesn’t regret signing his deal with the Bruins. It was inked the season after he was traded to the Bruins and had won the Cup, so he wanted to stay. The fact that he was moved doesn’t mean he regrets trying to stay as long as he could.

“I don’t have regrets at all,” he said. “I thought I’d be here for those three years, but things change quickly. I don’t know if I would have gotten traded if the salary cap hadn’t gone down, but things happen and you have no control over it. That’s why there are trades in the NHL.”

That brief time between the end of the season and the trade wasn’t the only strange thing Peverley’s encountered the last few months. He missed all of training camp and the first game of the season due to an irregular heartbeat that required a procedure to correct it, and in 13 games he has two goals and five assists for seven points and a plus-3 rating.

Of course, Peverley wasn’t the biggest name that went to Dallas in that trade, and his exit from Boston was certainly less noteworthy than Seguin’s.

Seguin was shipped amidst character concerns after a postseason in which he underperformed on the ice and had a little too much fun off the ice, but Peverley sees a change in Seguin’s attitude and dedication. He would know better than anybody the difference between what Seguin was like in Boston vs. what he’s like in Dallas.

“I’ve been really proud of him, to be honest,” Peverley said. “He’s kind of put it in the back of his mind, and he’s being really professional about it.”